§ I spent the first couple of days this week at the ASTC conference in Chicago. Despite having lived in the city for more than half a decade I never visited most of the city’s famous museums until this trip. The architecture alone of the Museum of Science and Industry, Shedd Aquarium, and Field Museum is worth the price of admission and that is before considering the seemingly infinite size of their exhibition halls all jam-packed with artifacts and interactives. I don’t know if Susanna Clarke had the Field Museum on her mind while she was writing Piranesi but I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised.
I took the opportunity to see Pissed Jeans at Empty Bottle while I was in the city. It was so much fun to see a punk show. It’s been quite a while.
On Monday there was a massive Verizon outage that knocked out cell service well into the afternoon. Apple’s messages via satellite feature didn’t work for me at all.
§ Back home in Cleveland I saw another concert on Wednesday: Lightning Bolt at Mahalls. Before this week, the last show I saw was Alice Longyu Gao more than a year ago.
§ The new season of FROM is out. It is starting to feel a little bit like the later seasons of Lost where it gets harder and harder to suspend disbelief until suddenly the whole show just sort of feels silly.
§ The essay “Too many places are STERILE and TORCHED — let’s make them COOL and FUNKY” has been rattling around in my brain nonstop since reading it mid-week. I agree on all fronts, particularly the bits about physical spaces.
§ On Friday the inevitable finally happened: I caught the cold everyone around me had. At least I was able to hold it off until after the Chicago trip.
§ But! On Friday I also got a big promotion that I’m pretty excited about.
